Reading List: December 2008

Before I begin, let me just say Happy New Year to each of you. I am unsure why I use this space each month to talk about progress on my thesis. It doesn't really fit with the post's theme, nor does it seem to be of any great interest to you readers. Yet it does serve as a place to hold myself accountable to progress I've made (or haven't made), thus it will continue.

This past month I completed my thesis proposal and began the process of getting it approved by my committee members. I also used my seminar paper in my research methods class to work out a literature review that with only slight tweaking should serve as a good fourth of the final project. Unfortunately, the economic troubles felt by the country have also been felt here at my house, so with the new acquisition of a full time job, I have decided to graduate not this Spring but instead this Summer. Relaxing the demands of school should help me maintain my sanity as I get the household back in black ink.

I also was accepted to a conference in April where I will present an overview of my thesis and hopefully receive some valuable feedback from other scholars. This will help make sure that I actually get some work done during the Spring.

This past month I finished 28 books, play, and graphic novels, and here is what they were:

• The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
• A Better Angel by Chris Adrian
• Powers: Roleplay by Brian Michael Bendis & Michael Avon Oeming
• Streamers by David Rabe
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman
• Nowhere Man by Aleksandar Hemon
• Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain
• Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee
• Wild Nights! by Joyce Carol Oates
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• Powers: Little Deaths by Bendis & Oeming
• Race Matters by Cornel West
• Powers: Supergroup by Bendis & Oeming
• The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
• Ex Machina: Fact v. Fiction by Brian K. Vaughan & Tony Harris
• The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
• Ex Machina: March to War by Vaughan & Harris
• The Quitter by Harvey Pekar & Dean Haspiel
• The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
• Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
• Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith
• The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl
• Death: The Time of Your Life by Neil Gaiman, et al.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill
• Coronado by Dennis Lehane
• The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
• Spaceman Blues by Brian Francis Slattery
• Ex Machina: Smoke Smoke by Vaughan & Harris

Not too difficult to see how the numbers can get inflated when one counts a graphic novel the same as a six hundred page book. I want to highly recommend Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas, easily one of the best books I read this past year. I'll also have thoughts in the next week on Brian K. Vaughan's Ex Machina comics.

As always, questions, comments, and recommendations are strongly encouraged. This month saw comments by two new readers, bringing the readership here up to almost double digits!